Buy it... if you are prepared for a heart-pounding, dramatic
powerhouse with native chants, ominous synthetic chorus, orchestral
depth, weighty themes, and an excellent array of specialty flutes and
percussion.

Avoid it... if you are either deterred by James Horner's repetitive
thematic structures or are seeking more of the intensely personal
recordings of Native American chants you heard in Thunderheart.

EDITORIAL REVIEW

FILMTRACKS TRAFFIC RANK: #238

WRITTEN
11/15/03, REVISED 3/15/09

BUY IT

(9.99)

Horner

The Missing: (James Horner) Based on the novel "The
Last Ride" by Thomas Eidson, Ron Howard's 2003 adaptation titled The
Missing brings a tale of horror and desperation in the old American
Southwest to the big screen. Set in the last years of the 19th Century,
the film's plot is one of simple kidnapping and pursuit, with a teenage
daughter taken by a group of vigilantes and the estranged family members
of the girl desperately attempting to rescue the daughter before the
band of criminals takes her, and others they abducted, into the
wilderness of Mexico. Cate Blanchett's gritty performance as the
weathered mother of the lost girl was particularly applauded by critics.
On top of the basic story, however, is a touch of Native American
mysticism, for the grandfather of the abducted girl (played by Tommy Lee
Jones) utilizes the native tracking techniques of his culture to assist
in the terrifying search. The journey undertaken by these characters
allowed Howard to display the harsh realities of nature in the region
while also romanticizing the landscapes to the usual level of cinematic
awe that audiences expect to see. The director had collaborated with
composer James Horner several times in the previous ten years, with the
scores for A Beautiful Mind and Apollo 13 both nominated
for Academy Awards. The collaboration had not always been fruitful for
Horner's collectors, however, with both Ransom and How the
Grinch Stole Christmas fading fast in his career. For The
Missing, Horner would return to arguably his most inspirational
genre of composition: grand ethnic drama. While Horner remains loyal to
the ethnic demands of the American Southwest, he also unleashes the
fully orchestral structure of epic themes that most listeners remember
fondly from Legends of the Fall. More interestingly, The
Missing was among a group of Horner scores in late 2003 that, for
the first time in a while, did not to rely on the contributions of an
advertised soloist.

Instead of following this predictable pattern, Horner
replaces the single solo talent with a strong array of his usual
performers on ethnic woodwinds and percussion. This is a technique that
made the likes of Willow and The Mask of Zorro such
memorable efforts, and the same attention to detail has a measurable
effect in The Missing, too. Without a doubt, this music
represented Horner's most dramatically impressive score in a great
while, exuding a character built upon a simple philosophy of ethnic
variance rather than the composer's typically melodramatic, thematic
base. As can be heard in the very first minutes of the score, Horner's
vintage sound of Native American chanting is mixed over a richly
harmonic alternation of broad, orchestral tones. Even as the score
becomes frightfully chaotic, especially in the fast-paced chase and
rescue cues later in the work, Horner maintains that harmonic orchestral
foundation behind the huge variety of crashing, tapping, chanting, and
tearing accents, sometimes in correlation with a thematic statement.
Horner manages this delicate balance between the romance of the story
(and the land) and the frightful emotions of the harrowing, immediate
task at hand very well in The Missing. For a score with horrors
around every turn, the sheer determination of the story's primary
characters persists though the composer's loyalty to his thematic
constructs, therefore making The Missing a very listenable score.
For Horner collectors and critics, the score's only weakness will be the
similarity between this material's familiar progressions and those of
Legends of the Fall and, to a lesser degree, Titanic. Many
such listeners consider The Missing to be simply a darker variant
on Legends of the Fall, a description not entirely without merit.
While Horner's positioning of the themes is excellent, the actual
melodies (with the primary identity of note being introduced in full in
"Dawn to Dusk; The Riderless Horse") utilize all the same supporting
progressions that Horner has built dramatic themes upon throughout his
career.

Thus, with the primary theme existing as mostly an
extension of Legends of the Fall, more weight would inevitably
fall on the shoulders of the specialty instruments to carry the unique
personality of The Missing. And that they do, with the overall
sound of the score varying from Horner's usual orchestral sappiness to
appease, at least to some extent, even the harshest of Horner
detractors. He begins with his faithful, old shakuhachi flute (a regular
element of his music since Willow) and adds a kena flute, bowed
mouth harp, panpipes, and a collection of physical items in the
percussion section on which to tap, rap, and bang. Perhaps most notable
element is the widely advertised use of metallic, folding chairs as
items on which to tap instead of a snare drum. Horner also includes
various electronic sound effects very slightly under the other elements,
along with the Indian chants and a light, synthetic choral effect that
he was beginning to employ throughout the majority of his scores of this
era. The result of all of these players and singers is a score that
resembles pieces of Horner's other efforts, but in a refreshingly new
combination. The flutes offer a hauntingly beautiful accompaniment to
thematic outbursts at the outset and conclusion, with a page taken from
Hans Zimmer's Beyond Rangoon after about a minute into the score.
Horner also reintroduces the panpipes to set a fast, rhythmic tone, as
done in Legends of the Fall, in "The Stranger" and "An
Insurmountable Hurdle." After the major introduction of theme in "Dawn
to Dusk; The Riderless Horse," Horner energizes the pace of the
orchestra with the tingling and clanging percussion used in the panic
and disaster scenes in Apollo 13 and Titanic
(respectively), with the same kind of electronic circuit-clicking
rhythms applied with a less sophisticated edge. Medium range drum
accents in the most active cues are also reminiscent of those two
previous scores. The organic sound of the shakuhachi (always a
distinctively elegant instrument) is integrated in a way that suggests a
howling wolf in the latter half of the score.

The culmination of the native chants, synthetic
effects, theme, and specialty instruments exists in "The Brujo's Storm,"
a monumentally enormous and aggressive cue that put the engaging action
material from all of Horner's other scores of the early 2000's to shame.
With the full ensemble unleashed in excellently mixed, reverberating
layers, this cue, as well as the exciting "Rescue and Breakout," offers
Horner's most intense and powerful music in several years. In this
material, Horner propels the frightening action with trademark trumpet
counterpoint and drum-pounding accents, but credit should be given to
Horner for resisting the readily overused four-note motif that he
usually employs to represent evil (never once is it heard on the album
for The Missing). For listeners hoping for a reprise of
Thunderheart, which remains one of Horner's most unique and
intriguingly memorable scores, you may be slightly disappointed. The
incorporation of the chanting into The Missing is done without
the same intensely personal style as in Thunderheart, and while
both are effective in their roles, Thunderheart is still the
better, dedicated score for Native American chanting alone. Both are
significantly better in these regards, however, than the underachieving
and less inspiring Windtalkers. Overall, The Missing
remains evidence that Horner is at his best when he ceases messing
around with a famous soloist and concentrates on writing for a richly
stocked orchestral ensemble. Due to the repetition of thematic
development from previous scores, The Missing is a shade less
than perfect, but you can't help but marvel at the lengths to which
Horner went to produce a spooky and unique environment for this
assignment. A full album from the Sony family of labels provides
Horner's efforts in a very listenable and often exhilarating
presentation, with the final seven minutes of "The Long Ride Home" a
stunning melodramatic powerhouse. It is a score that was among the best
of 2003 and worthy of serious consideration during the awards season
that year, though the Academy, proving their fickle psychology, chose to
nominate Horner for House of Sand and Fog, a far inferior score,
instead. *****@Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:

For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.16
(in 103 reviews)and the average viewer rating is 3.26
(in 192,659 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.